This year, once again, the Sonic Hacking Contest returns to put a shine on your favorite and upcoming ROM Hacks and Mods!

The SHC has undergone many changes in the past few months between the last contest and this announcement, even down to the inner management! To stay up to date with the changes, watch our video presentation detailing all of the changes for SHC2024, or keep reading!

You may have noticed a number of notable differences in the schedule format since last year, such as the absence of the Updates Week.

This is where you'll find the first few changes! There's been a lot of confusion in regards to the Updates Week's purpose. It appears to have been a period reserved to patching any errors and polishing the entries. However, that was not a widely enforced (or disclosed) rule, and many have been operating under the assumption that the Updates Week would welcome all sorts of updates, including major content updates.

To save everyone the confusion, we're getting rid of the Updates Week. We have kept that into account when determining the Submissions Deadline, to give entrants one additional week of further development. However, this means that, starting this year, entries found on the website at the Submissions Deadline will be considered final, and, outside of the usual exceptions granted for game breaking bug fixes, we will not be accepting updates past the Submissions Deadline. This comes with the added condition that, should an entrant release an unauthorized update for a Judged Entry in the period between the end of the Submissions Deadline, and the end of Community Voting, Judges reserve the right to immediately disqualify the Entry. More on that in the rules.

In short, starting this year, the deadline you see above applies to all submissions: Judged submissions; Unjudged submissions; and Trailer clip submissions. We'll open up submissions later around August through a future announcement, so stay tuned!

Keen eyes will have noticed that, until now, the Expo went entirely unmentioned. That's because we're getting rid of that, too.

Entries to the main event can still opt in and out of judgment. However, both Entry kinds will appear on the same website page! Don't worry, we'll make sure you can still tell them apart when browsing the website for entries, you're just going to be more likely to notice them!

We recognize that the Expo has been home for some… less than favorable entries in the past, and that said entries may have turned some of you off from checking out some of the higher quality ones, so we're going to address that by increasing the Quality Standards for Unjudged Entries to match those of the Judged ones.

Another thing you may have noticed is the fact that the usual Contest "Week" lasts a bit more than a week this year.

We have received plenty of demand from you people asking us to extend the Contest Period. And we're going to deliver! We're going to experiment with extended Contest Periods, starting this year with 9 days of it! Should this be well received, we may consider going even longer for future years!

In previous years, an entry was submitted for one of the three macro categories, and a Judge of that category would be required to judge it regardless of base game. However, some judges may have lesser knowledge or familiarity with the game, therefore leading to lower quality judgment.

We're going to address it by introducing Free-Flow Judgment, a system allowing Judges to opt in and out of Judgment for select games! This will allow Judges to stick with games they are most comfortable with, ensuring that your entry will be looked at by experts at their craft, or by folks that truly know what they're talking of. Naturally, to prevent understaffing, Select Judges of a given category may be assigned to judge a more exotic game, should a submission for it pop up. We'll announce who judges what later this year.

Judges will remain split in the three macro categories, maintaining a rough expectation. For a full list of Judges, view the Judges Code of Conduct page.

Thanks for your attention! If you’ve just finished reading this page, also make sure you’ve read the other ones, too, as these also contain important changes!

Make sure to check the home page of our website, as important news will be delivered there! We also happen to be on a number of socials, like Twitter, YouTube, and BlueSky, where we also deliver a series of news and fun content to the table! If you want to reach out to us or the community, you're also welcome to join the official Discord server, and you're free to contact us through our email at shc<.>zone<.>site@gmail<.>com (without the "<>"s) for inquiries.

With all that said and done, get ready… set… PROCRASTINATE!